I rejoice in an occasion like this which draws the attention of the world to topics which illustrate the union of art with literature and of literature with science, because you have a hard race to run, you have a severe competition against the attraction of external pursuits, whether those pursuits take the form of business or pleasure.  It is given to you to teach lessons of the utmost importance to mankind, in maintaining the principle that no progress can be real which is not equable, which is not proportionate, which does not develop all the faculties belonging to our nature.  If a great increase of wealth in a country takes place, and with that increase of wealth a powerful stimulus to the invention of mere luxury, that, if it stands alone, is not, never can be, progress.  It is only that one-sided development which is but one side of deformity.  I hope we shall have no one-sided development.  One mode of avoiding it is to teach the doctrine of that sisterhood you have asserted to-day, and confident I am that the good wishes you have exprest on behalf of literature will be re-echoed in behalf of art wherever men of letters are found.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME[1]

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Brothers of the Association of the Alumni:—­It is your misfortune and mine that you must accept my services as your presiding officer of the day in the place of your retiring president.  I shall not be believed if I say how unwillingly it is that for the second time I find myself in this trying position; called upon to fill, as I best may, the place of one whose presence and bearing, whose courtesy, whose dignity, whose scholarship, whose standing among the distinguished children of the university, fit him alike to guide your councils and to grace your festivals.  The name of Winthrop has been so long associated with the State and with the college that to sit under his mild empire is like resting beneath one of these wide-branching elms the breadth of whose shade is only a measure of the hold its roots have taken in the soil.  In the midst of civil strife we, the children of this our common mother, have come together in peace.  And surely there never was a time when we more needed a brief respite in some chosen place of refuge, some unviolated sanctuary, from the cares and anxieties of our daily existence than at this very hour.  Our life has grown haggard with excitement.  The rattle of drums, the march of regiments, the gallop of squadrons, the roar of artillery, seem to have been continually sounding in our ears day and night, sleeping and waking, for two long years and more.  How few of us have not trembled and shuddered with fear over and over again for those whom we love.  Alas! how many that hear me have mourned over the lost—­lost to earthly sight, but immortal in our love and their country’s honor!  We need a little breathing-space to rest from our anxious thoughts, and, as we look back to the tranquil days we passed in this still retreat, to dream of that future when in God’s good time, and after his wise purpose is fulfilled, the fair angel who has so long left us shall lay her hand upon the leaping heart of this embattled nation and whisper, “Peace! be still!”